Mike Weir's golf game rounding back into form before Halifax trip

Mike Weir will be a member of the Canadian team for the inaugural RBC Canada Cup exhibition match at Ashburn Golf Club’s New Course. (TONY GUTIERREZ / AP)

Mike Weir would rather be at Pinehurst this weekend.

The site of this week’s U.S. Open major championship holds a special place in the heart of the 44-year-old Canadian golf star.

“The first major championship that I qualified for was the U.S. Open in ’99 at Pinehurst,” Weir said during a recent phone interview from his Utah home.

The lefty from Bright’s Grove, Ont., missed the cut for the U.S. Open by three strokes at a June 2 qualifier in Columbus, Ohio.

“I was excited to see the changes there,” Weir said of Pinehurst No. 2, which went through extensive changes that has reverted the course’s look to what it was in the 1940s. “I wanted to get over there and play.

“I had been playing well,” he added. “But at (the U.S. Open qualifier) I just didn’t putt very well. I was hitting the ball nicely but for some odd reason I just couldn’t make a thing and I ended up missing by three shots. That was very disappointing.”

The putter may not have been working for him at Brookside, but Weir did find his form with the flatstick at last month’s HP Byron Nelson Championship in Texas.

A clutch putter during his formidable years — think of the seven-foot putt on No. 18 at the 2003 Masters that forced a sudden-death playoff which he won — he led the Byron Nelson field in putting average (1.512) en route to four rounds in the 60s and a runner-up finish to champion Brendan Todd.

It was Weir’s best showing on the PGA Tour since a second-place finish at the 2009 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

“I’ve been working very hard to get myself back into contention,” said Weir, who won the last of his eight PGA Tour titles in 2007. “As the tournament went along I seemed to get better and better. I played better Saturday and Sunday than I did Thursday and Friday.

“Even though I haven’t been in contention for awhile, it was good to see I played my best in the final round. I didn’t forget how to do it and I did the things I needed to win, although I didn’t win. It worked great for my confidence.”

Unfortunately for Weir he couldn’t carry that momentum into the following week at the Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village. He missed the cut by two strokes.

“I putted OK there but I was just slightly off,” Weir said. “It’s a darn frustrating game a lot of the time. If you can put it all together, you can be in contention every other week. Not many guys can do that.”

Frustrated could sum up his career the past five years. The only Canadian winner of a major golf championship, Weir suffered an elbow injury in 2010 that took months to recover. He finished the 2012 season ranked 1,492nd.

“After surgery, I lost flexibility,” said Weir, who’s currently ranked 247th in the world and 106th in the FedEx Cup standings. “I worked extremely hard on it but I still don’t have 100 per cent range of motion that I used to have.

“I had to make a few adjustments to my golf swing because of that. I set my club a little different. But it doesn’t hurt anymore. When you have an injury like that when you’re older, you don’t recover as well as you did in your 20s. It’s a continual process. I still have to work on it, stretch it out and try to maintain as much flexibility in there as I can.”

Weir will travel to Halifax later this month for the inaugural RBC Canada Cup exhibition match at Ashburn Golf Club’s New Course.

He joins fellow Canadians Graham DeLaet, David Hearn and Adam Hadwin in the June 30th exhibition match against a world team featuring South Africa’s Trevor Immelman, Matt Kuchar and Gary Woodland of the U.S. and Manuel Villegas of Colombia.

Weir will face Woodland, ranked 47th in the world and one of the longest drivers on the PGA Tour, in the second matchup.

A veteran of match play events like the Presidents Cup and the WGC-Accenture championships, Weir enjoys the exhibition format.

“It’s a fun thing to do,” Weir said. “Obviously playing in the Presidents Cup, I love playing in team events. I think playing with three other Canadian guys, that’s kind of cool. It’s something I haven’t done before.

“It's a nice aversion from the grind of the season. And it’ll be fun to see the younger guys, watch their game, see how they’re doing. To play with them will be a good thing for me.

“But we don’t want to lose,” he added. “We’re playing at home, it’s an inaugural event so we want to kick it off well.”

The RBC Canada Cup will be the fifth exhibition tournament Weir has played in the Maritimes since he turned pro in 1998. It follows the ’98 Canadian Skins Game at Crowbush, P.E.I., the 2000 Wayne Gretzky and Friends Invitational at Glen Arbour, a second Gretzky and Friends tournament in 2001 at Bell Bay and the 2007 Legends of Golf match versus Vijay Singh at Crowbush.

Needless to say, he likes playing tournaments in this region. Weir considers himself low key and laid back, traits he shares with many Maritimers.

“I’ve always loved the east coast of Canada since my Canadian Tour days,” said Weir, who has played New Ashburn before but he couldn’t remember when.

“The people are great, we eat well and I just love the laid back lifestyle. It’s kind of like my lifestyle around home, low key. It fits me well.”